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PunchOut catalogs empower suppliers to offer an easier and more streamlined B2B purchasing experience to their customers. Buyers can search for and select products in an up-to-date eCommerce store with negotiated pricing – all directly within their eProcurement solution. When the buyer is ready to transfer the cart data back to their internal system to create a requisition and begin the order approval process, the PunchOut integration automatically translates and transfers the data between the store and the buyer’s eProcurement system.
PunchOut, however, is just the beginning of the B2B purchasing process. After the purchase request is approved by the customer’s internal team, the buyer still must manually:
- Submit a purchase order (PO)
- Record a PO acknowledgement
- Process and reconcile invoices
By extending B2B purchasing integration and automation beyond PunchOut catalogs to include POs and invoices, buyers and suppliers benefit from seamless automation throughout the entire procure-to-pay process.
What is Purchase Order and Invoice Automation?
PO automation removes the need for paper and PDF purchase orders. Once an order is approved in a buyer’s eProcurement solution, PO automation automatically generates a purchase order and transfers it to the supplier’s order management system. Automation ensures POs are delivered quickly and without errors.
Similar to PunchOut, the TradeCentric Platform seamlessly translates PO data into a format suitable for the supplier’s system. It works with any eCommerce or order management system, allowing buyers to deliver accurate and timely POs to any integrated supplier. This process accelerates order acceptance and enables straight-through order processing without manual intervention.
Invoice automation accelerates the invoicing process by delivering invoice data to buyer eProcurement solutions. Once an order has shipped, Invoice Automation pulls invoice data from the supplier’s system and seamlessly delivers it to the buyer’s eProcurement platform for reconciliation and payment.
Invoice automation ensures that invoices are properly validated, formatted, and ready to be reconciled for payment without requiring manual data entry by the supplier or buyer.
3 Key Benefits of PO Automation and Invoice Automation
Combining PunchOut with PO automation and Invoice Automation creates a seamless procure-to-pay workflow that accelerates purchasing and delivery while reducing procurement, invoicing, and payment errors to relieve procurement teams of unnecessary manual work.
Here are three key benefits for businesses that adopt end-to-end PunchOut, PO, and Invoice Automation.
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Success Tracking
Suppliers need to know who orders are from, the frequency, and how orders are placed. They are better able to target resources when they understand growth areas and can track buyer behavior. The TradeCentric Platform allows suppliers to track the origin of all orders, whether that’s a PunchOut session, a custom quote, or a hosted catalog.
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Reduced Costs
McKinsey estimates it takes businesses an average of 15 minutes to manually process an order. Larger organizations might process dozens or hundreds of orders a week, which can quickly add up to expensive hours of work.
Instead of spending their time moving purchasing data from one system to another, employees can focus on activities that generate value for the business.
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Accelerated Purchasing and Payment
To initiate a purchase, a buyer must create and submit a PO to their supplier. This process requires the buyer to export data from their purchasing solution and send their order data into a format that is compatible with their supplier’s system. PO automation expedites this process so buyers can make purchases faster and get the items they need as soon as possible.
Similarly, a typical supplier invoicing workflow involves generating paper, fax, email or PDF invoices and sending them to buyers. Alternatively, they may manually upload invoices to buyer systems, logging in to potentially hundreds of different portals. Invoice Automation eliminates these redundant and time-consuming tasks allowing teams to work faster and more efficiently to ensure on-time payment.
To learn how TradeCentric B2B connected commerce solutions can deliver value to your business, contact us.
